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Category: Journalism

Scientists aren’t impressed with New York Times’ new feature story on climate change

Scientists aren’t impressed with New York Times’ new feature story on climate change

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Joe Romm writes: The New York Times Magazine is hyping a massive new story claiming that the period from 1979 to 1989 was “The decade we almost stopped climate change.” But the just-released, roughly 30,000 word article by Nathaniel Rich is already being widely criticized by leading scientists, historians, and climate experts. As physicist Ben Franta, who studies the history of climate politics, put it, “Rich’s exoneration of fossil fuel producers as well as the Republican party seem based on…

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‘He doesn’t like bullies’: The story of the 37-year-old who took over the New York Times and is taking on Trump

‘He doesn’t like bullies’: The story of the 37-year-old who took over the New York Times and is taking on Trump

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The Washington Post reports: The new reporter was sharp, humble and eager to learn. Arthur had snazzier shoes than his colleagues at the Oregonian, but this was the only hint that he was a Sulzberger, the family that has owned and published the New York Times since 1896. He was 25 years old at the time he arrived in Portland in 2006, and Arthur Gregg Sulzberger fit right in even as his name stood out. Within months, he was aggressively…

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Europe shouldn’t fear Steve Bannon. It should fear the hype that surrounds him

Europe shouldn’t fear Steve Bannon. It should fear the hype that surrounds him

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Cas Mudde writes: If Steve Bannon didn’t exist, the media would have had to invent him. And, in fact, they largely did. US coverage has turned Bannon into Donald Trump’s Rasputin, single-handedly responsible for his shock election as the 45th president of the United States. And now, as Bannon crosses the Atlantic, breathless reports speak of his “Plan to Hijack Europe for the Far Right”. His meeting with the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson was apparently convened to plot “new…

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The liar’s dividend, and other challenges of deep-fake news

The liar’s dividend, and other challenges of deep-fake news

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Paul Chadwick writes: Do the notes taken by the interpreters at the recent Helsinki summit include the words “Snowden” and “swap”? We could ask the Russians to check their (assumed) audio recording and let us all know whether Presidents Trump and Putin discussed such a prospect during their long private chat. Trump wrong-footing his own country’s intelligence community by delivering their most-wanted, Edward Snowden, seems precisely the trolling that Putin would enjoy. What else might leak soon, in the form…

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The media’s failure to connect the dots on climate change

The media’s failure to connect the dots on climate change

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Emily Atkin writes: A record-breaking heat wave killed 65 people in Japan this week, just weeks after record flooding there killed more than 200. Record-breaking heat is also wreaking havoc in California, where the wildfire season is already worse than usual. In Greece, fast-moving fires have killed at least 80 people, and Sweden is struggling to contain more than 50 fires amid its worst drought in 74 years. Both countries have experienced all-time record-breaking temperatures this summer, as has most…

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The Capital Gazette shooting and the true value of local newspapers

The Capital Gazette shooting and the true value of local newspapers

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Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: On Thursday afternoon, a thirty-eight-year-old man named Jarrod Ramos killed five people at the Capital Gazette newspaper, in Annapolis, Maryland. He fired a gun into the newsroom, then stopped, reloaded—members of the staff now cowering under their desks—and then started firing again. After a mass shooting, there is usually both sadness and a sense of dread, as the country waits to discover the shooter’s identity and the nature of his grievance. But in this case the staff…

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Fox News once gave Trump a perch. Now it’s his bullhorn

Fox News once gave Trump a perch. Now it’s his bullhorn

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The New York Times reports: In 2011, Fox News announced that a new guest would appear weekly on “Fox & Friends,” its chummy morning show. “Bold, brash, and never bashful,” a network ad declared. “The Donald now makes his voice loud and clear, every Monday on Fox.” It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Seven years later, the symbiosis between Donald J. Trump and his favorite cable network has only deepened. Fox News, whose commentators resolutely defend the president’s…

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The escalating hatred faced by journalists

The escalating hatred faced by journalists

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Julie Beck writes: The majority of Americans do not trust the news media. There are many complex reasons why, and there’s enough blame to go around to many different parties, journalists included. So it’s hardly surprising that they get some rude messages. “But I’m not talking about the rudeness. I’m talking about intimidation,” says Elana Newman, a psychologist who works with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. “I’ve been working for the Dart Center for 20 years in some…

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News and the forgotten value of waiting

News and the forgotten value of waiting

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If someone wanted to create a parody of cable news, it would be hard to satirize the form more effectively than to cast Wolf Blitzer as the lead character in a goofy show called The Situation Room, where all news all the time is breaking news. The irony of the fact that CNN’s news show of that name is, on the contrary, meant to be taken seriously, is that it does indeed capture the zeitgeist of the news media environment…

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The ignorant do not have a right to an audience

The ignorant do not have a right to an audience

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Bryan W. Van Norden writes: What harm is there in people hearing obvious falsehoods and specious argumentation if any sane and minimally educated person can see through them? The problem, though, is that humans are not rational in the way [the English philosopher John Stuart] Mill assumes [in, On Liberty]. I wish it were self-evident to everyone that we should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, but the current vice president of the United States does not…

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It’s time for the press to suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency

It’s time for the press to suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency

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Jay Rosen writes: It sometimes happens in diplomacy that one country has to say to another: “This is extreme. We cannot accept this. You have gone too far.” And so it suspends diplomatic relations. In 2012 the government of Canada announced that it would suspend diplomatic relations with Iran. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” said the foreign minister. Journalists charged with covering him should suspend…

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Dear journalists: Stop being loudspeakers for liars

Dear journalists: Stop being loudspeakers for liars

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Dan Gillmor writes: An open letter to my friends and colleagues in journalism: Please, just stop. Please stop giving live airtime to liars. Stop publishing their lies. Please examine what you’re doing. You are letting liars use your traditional norms — which made sense in different times and situations — to turn you into amplifiers of deceit. You know you are doing this, and sometimes you even defend it. Please stop. But but but but, you say, he’s the president and we have to…

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The press needs to sandwich Trump’s lies between thick slices of reality

The press needs to sandwich Trump’s lies between thick slices of reality

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Margaret Sullivan writes: Last week was a particularly rough one for journalists and truth-seeking citizens. President Trump declared the news media the nation’s worst enemy. And time after shocking time, his acolytes demeaned or threatened reporters for doing one of their most basic jobs: asking questions of those in power. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a reporter in North Korea that it was “insulting and ridiculous and ludicrous” for him to be asked about details of the verification process…

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Puerto Rico’s devastation takes a backseat to Roseanne coverage

Puerto Rico’s devastation takes a backseat to Roseanne coverage

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Pete Vernon writes: For those who argue that the media has misplaced priorities when it comes to coverage choices, this week has provided a case study to support their position. While media outlets from cable news to digital publishers obsessed over the cancellation of ABC’s Roseanne, a report on the staggering death toll in Puerto Rico has, in comparison, been met with relative silence. Researchers from Harvard University estimate that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to Hurricane Maria…

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The Onion’s brutal Israel commentary goes beyond satire

The Onion’s brutal Israel commentary goes beyond satire

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Vice News reports: On Monday, as the United States celebrated moving its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinian protesters were shot by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the border fence separating Israel and Gaza. At least 60 Palestinians died as a result, and the seemingly never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine was once again at the top of the international news. On May 16, the front page of the New York Times displayed a poignant…

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The fake news Russians hear at home

The fake news Russians hear at home

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Anne Applebaum writes: Because it touches us, because it involves the U.S. president, and because it has produced a lot of headlines, the strategy and tactics of Russian government disinformation in the West have lately been big news. Because it’s far away, and because it happens in a different language, we’ve thought a lot less about Russian government propaganda in Russia. But it will eventually matter to us — maybe sooner than we think. The transformation of Russian media hasn’t…

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